Are your Christmas cards bringing joyful tidings for charity?

Not all charity Christmas cards donate the same amount.
Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi for the Guardian

If you are planning to buy your charity Christmas cards this weekend, don’t forget to check the amount that is actually donated to the charity concerned - and to consider walking away if the sum isn’t a generous proportion of the purchase price.

Over the last decade, the Charities Advisory Trust (and Guardian Money) has sought to highlight the often pitiful amounts that are sometimes passed on to the charities in whose name the cards are sold. Despite big strides in this area – donations of as little as 3% used to be commonplace – several big-name retailers have still not got the message.

For example, out of the £3 that Waitrose is currently charging for its Essential pack of Chinese-made cards, just 10p goes to each of its three chosen charities – Crohn’s and Colitis UK, YoungMinds and the Prince’s Countryside Trust.

Sainsbury’s and WH Smith are among the high street retailers selling charity cards that hand over just 10% of what the customer pays. But other retailers give nothing – with Asda not having any charity-donation cards among the many packs it sells online.

Charity card retailers are required to state the percentage donation somewhere on the packaging or website. The big retailers defend their low percentages by claiming that the large volumes involved mean millions of pounds in total can be raised.

But cards bought from the charities direct typically hand over 60%-70% – and in one case 100% (see below).

Money research has found that Paperchase donates 13.3% or 50p to the Alzheimer’s Society from the £3.75 it charges for its eight-card pack featuring its 12 Days of Christmas design.

Clinton Cards fares a little better. Buyers of its Ray of Sunshine charity cards are donating 15% of the £4 they pay for its 32-card box set.

Meanwhile, Aldi is putting many of its more upmarket rivals in the shade – its £1.99 packs of six cards donate 50p or almost 26% to the Teenage Cancer Trust.

By avoiding the big high street names you can increase the donation massively. Card Aid sells “real charity cards” that donate 60% of the purchase price to the charity concerned via its pop-up shops in London or Cambridge, or through its website – Cardaid.co.uk.

Cards for Good Causes operates 300 shops in churches and libraries all over the country supplying cards that donate 70% of the purchase price to one of 25 member charities. In its case, the charitable organisations, which include Save the Children, RNLI and Cancer Research, have to pay for the card to be produced out of the 70%. This reduces the actual donation but is still significantly above the likes of Waitrose or Sainsbury’s.

Cards that can make real change

There’s still time to buy what Money considers the best Christmas card ever – one that donates 100% of the purchase price to the charity.

Started 28 years ago by British Airways flight attendant Pat Kerr, the Sreepur Village charity – two hours north of the Bangladesh capital, Dhaka – cares for up to 100 destitute women and 500 abandoned children.

The charity helps fund itself from the sale of beautiful Christmas cards hand made on the site. At its heart is a facility that produces high-quality paper from locally grown jute, which is then dyed in vibrant colours. The cards are decorated by women from the local community in return for a living wage that helps financially empower the women involved.

British Airways, a long-term corporate supporter, flies the cards to the UK for free, where volunteers distribute them. It is the only card that can make the 100% donation claim. Guardian Money visited the site in 2009 and can confirm the money is being well spent.

As well as taking in abandoned children, in the last few month, Sreepur staff have been on the Burmese border helping the 620,000 Rohingya people forced to flee Myanmar. With aid agencies providing food and shelter, Kerr and her team have been providing the women, many of whom who arrived with nothing, with much-needed sanitary products and nappies for the children.

• Each Sreepur pack contains 15 cards of three different designs and costs £14.25. For more information and to order, go to Sreepurcards.org